Street Cars And Electricity

At a recent meeting of the Bufl'alo Electrical society, Frank Kitton, of the Western Union telegraph company, read the following, which is of considerable interest to Ann Arbor people in view of the proposed street railway. The railway will probably have horsepower for a time, but the question of another power is sure to arise: The objections offered to horses and mules, he said, were numerous. They are expensive to maintain, liable to epidemies and sickness, occupy considerble space in stabling, and require Jor iheir care an army of employés. Their efficiency is always a minimum in times of extreme heat, or after great storms, when their full workingcapacity is generally needed. The horee-car cannot make up lost time as can a ruotor-car, without a tremendous taxation of endnrance on the horses; nor can it be reversed without turning the car or transferring the team to the other end. Although the cable systein has been operated in some places with economy and success, when compared with norse power there was the disadvantage that a very large percentage (in some eaes as much as 80 per cent.) of the energy required to opérate it was expended in moving the cable alone. A great objection was the fact that any daruage done to the cable itself, or any cause of stoppage to any part of the power plant, puts the entire system out of service at once, while even the breaking down of a car will suspend traffic on a line, as a car cannot turn off the track and go around the obstruction, as with many of the othur systems. The life of ■ cable is not over a year on busy Hnes, while the cost is quite high, as is also the conduit in which the cable runs. The cable which is the most successful in operation cost $125,000 per track milt'. Electricity, said Mr. Kitton, offers severalwaysoutofthedifncultiesenumerated. There were no fewer than 72 electric Street railways in this country and Canada. Among the advantages which each of the different electric systems offer are, that with electricity the expense for "feed" in the shape of fuel is regulated bv the number of cars in actual opeíation at the time and not by the size of the plant, as with horse power. During strikes, or at times of plague in the stables, the advantages of electric-motor power are mostapparent, for the power plant can then be shut down and the consumption of fuel stopped until the trouble has passed, where otherwise the barns would have been filled with horses "eatiner their heads off." Therei were those who were skeptical as to the practicability of operating electric cars in localities where snow and ice abound, said Mr. Kitton. Experience, however, had shown that snow and ice ofifer little, if any, opposition to their working. At Des Moines, Ia., recently, the motor cars of the broadgauge railway company made their regular trips every 15 minutes during a severe snowstorm, when the horseears, with four horsen ío each car, could not run on time, :.nd the steam motor whiob ran out into the north end of the lown was ditched. One of the severest storms which St. Joseph, Mo., ever experienced occurred on November 9th, when the telegraph, telephone, and electric light wires brolie under the strain of the accumulated damp Bnow on them, but left intact the overhead wires of the electric railway, the cars of which continued to make their regular trips without stoppage or delay, which goes to prove that a constructed overhead system cannot be easily disarranged and that the tractiye powers of the electric cars are surririsingly great. The motors are placed on the cars in Buch a marnier as to greatly augment the traction. and to leave available for general traffic all that space ordinarily occupied by the horses. The electric car can inereaee its speed when necessary, without detrimental effect, and at very little additional coat. Upon grades it has proved itself equal to any reasonable emergency, and it can be moved backward as well as forward at the will of the driver. Electricity has none of the disadvantages of the direct application of steam power, and is vastly superior to the cable system. There is but slight waste of electrical energy in transporting it to the cars, each of whicli moves perfectly independent of all other cars, and an accident to the conducting wire only renders a small seetion of the road temporarily inoperative. Mr. Kitton gpoke of the other advantages in favor of electricity, which he said may be furnished either by means of storage batteries or by dynamo machines at a power station supplying a conducting-wire with the necessary current. The storage-battery sygtem was undoubtedly the ideal one, but Mr. Kitton did not think it had yet arrived at that stage of perfection where its use could efflciently and economically supplant horse-power under all conditions. The under-ground conduit system was mostly in favor with the public, but aside from the increased cost of such a plant the fact that it is in the experimental stage, and could not be considered an assured suecess, would deter railroad officials from adopting it. He was himself very much in favor of the overhead-conductor system, which had proved eminently successful in all respects and under all conditions. That system, however, suffered under the great disadvantage of public prejudice, although recently a disposition of toleration, even in the larger cities, had been indicated in favor of the proposition to erect overhead conductors for the purpose of propelling street cars. When that prejudice was entirely removed, the greatest difficulty at present encountered in adopting electric traction to street cars would be removed. It would then be clearly established that electricity offers advantages in cost of plant, in point of maintenance and operation, in public safety and conven. ience, and in humanity, that areoffered by no other known system. When the public mind ceased to associate overhead conductors for Btreet-railway poses with tlie erection of unsightly, rough ca asta, to wering upwarda in all their native crookedness, to which ere affixed ('ross-arms of various lengths and sizee, and conceive iustead ornamental posts constructed of steel or iron, griiceful in shape and whicb niay be combined with the lamp post now erected, this prejudice should di.appear. The possibilities in ornamental design of such posts were tinlimited, and Mr. Kitton showed by means of a number of photo-engravings thut the overhead system was not such a disfigurement to the streets as might at flrst be supposed. It was a growing belief that public demand - public necessity for a better system of street-car service, will soon sway public sentiment, and that the electric-motor will replace horses, even here in Buffalo, probably the most conservative city in the adoption of new and advanced ideas. Nearly all of the seventy-two roads mentioned are operated by the overhead system. These roads are located in sixty-two different cities and towns, and opérate 51 7 cars over 330 miles of track, and embrace eight different systems, each of which Mr. Kitton described in detail, as well as the series of interesting experimenta recently conducted by Mr. Daft in connection with electric propulsión on the Ninth-avenue elevated road in New York.